As you should. I've said several times in the past one could channel trade this stock from the 250-330 area and make money several times over the past year however with all this extra headline risk I think there is more pressure to the downside and TSLA may be more of a buy-out or merger candidate than a viable auto-mfg competitor.

Buy em, take the tech, sell the assets to Duracell or Energizer move on....

The problem is it's difficult to sell a company that consistently shows losses.

Under the terms of the settlement, Musk must relinquish his chairmanship position on the board but remains the CEO. I'm unclear whether he's been required to step down from the board entirely or if he's now just another board member like any other? Anyone know?

Lithium: is a one time mining process, followed by a decade of use.
Coal: ongoing process, as each bit of coal only can be used once.

The per unit extraction emissions are a pretty useless way to look at things, when you consider the vastly different lifespans of what's being extracted.

Transporting batteries between continents is inefficient, but inevitably the quantity of recycling centers will increase as the quantity of batteries increases. E.g. The gigafactory has a battery recycling center-- so batteries in the USA can go there.

Do you know what actually happens to a lithium battery when it is recycled?

The value for the Li-ion recycling business currently comes from the valuable metals such as cobalt and nickel that are more highly priced than lithium. Due to less demand for lithium and low prices, almost none of the lithium used in consumer batteries is completely recycled.

So all the used lithium batteries end up in a landfill somewhere. Lithium batteries is a extremely dirty business and people will live with the consequences of that for decades after the batteries are used up.

Tesla's are like nothing else on the market and that they are an environmentally progressive choice.

Tesla kool-aid is tainted.... likely the biggest lie the eco crowd has ever been fed.

The mining process for lithium alone is off the charts compared to traditional coal. Funny part is the earth has a process for absorbing carbon emissions, yet not one to handle lithium ion batteries lol.

"Once a battery reaches the end of its life, there is recycling and disposal to be considered. Currently, over 90% of lead-acid batteries used in typical gasoline-powered vehicles are recycled. Compare that to less than 5% of lithium-ion batteries. Experts project 11m tonnes of lithium-ion batteries will be discarded between 2017 and 2030 [8]. These batteries will need to be transported to recycling facilities around the world to be processed, further contributing to their negative environmental impact. Transporting batteries from Australia to Europe resulted in an increase of global warming potential of ~45% [9]."

Have they done a study on the environmental effects and cost effectiveness of the transport and recycling of old batteries versus that of transporting fuel across the country?

Ill make this argument again: a big advantage of the EV is the reduction of reliance on the transportation of fuel from source to consumer. Residential solar panels and the existing grid will deliver energy to our vehicles instead of large tanker trucks and boats. Even if the grid is still significantly reliant on coal and fossil fuels, there is an overall reduction in energy consumption and environmental impact due to the energy delivery system.

The increase in battery capacity will eventually reduce the need for public charging stations: most vehicles will have a 200-300+ mile range where most day to day charging will only be needed at night when the car is parked.

You would have to be blind to everything except tailpipe emissions to believe that. The batteries alone are an ecological nightmare.

See my post above. They are no more a nightmare then millions of fossil fuel burning engines and the transport of fuel from source to consumer millions of times over and over every single day. As technology improves maybe we can find an alternative to lithium ion batteries, but the infrastructure for charging our vehicles locally is far superior than the delivery of liquid fuel to every single engine in the world. Much like we have managed to make our ICE more and more efficient and more and more clean and environmentally friendly, so can we make the battery more efficient and environmentally friendly. The ICE infrastructure, like it or not, is antiquated and inefficient. Not only that, but it's finite. What choice do we have?

Lithium: is a one time mining process, followed by a decade of use.
Coal: ongoing process, as each bit of coal only can be used once.

The per unit extraction emissions are a pretty useless way to look at things, when you consider the vastly different lifespans of what's being extracted.

Transporting batteries between continents is inefficient, but inevitably the quantity of recycling centers will increase as the quantity of batteries increases. E.g. The gigafactory has a battery recycling center-- so batteries in the USA can go there.

Do you know what actually happens to a lithium battery when it is recycled?

The value for the Li-ion recycling business currently comes from the valuable metals such as cobalt and nickel that are more highly priced than lithium. Due to less demand for lithium and low prices, almost none of the lithium used in consumer batteries is completely recycled.

So all the used lithium batteries end up in a landfill somewhere. Lithium batteries is a extremely dirty business and people will live with the consequences of that for decades after the batteries are used up.

And oil isn't a dirty business? Pipeline bursts, air pollution, oil spills... aren't we going to be dealing with the repercussions of those for generations as well? I'm all for recognizing the hurdles of the EV, but let's not forget that we are coming from a pretty bad place with fossil fuels.

Let's also be realistic. Eventually the price of lithium will give way for the need to recycle it. We cannot reject an entire technology because we lack the motivation to do something we should be doing for the sake of our quality of life. When it becomes economically necessary and viable, we will recycle lithium. If anything, the argument you made should be enough to say we should be recycling it, thus making a stronger case for the EV.

Joe Mizsak wears a lab coat like a professor from another era. His is blue instead of white and he looks very much the part of a learned old man. He should as he holds a U.S. patent from 1963 for a safety device that all modern cars have today: the brake wear indictor with a dash light shining bright red when a sensor on the brake lining detects problems.

This very clever Joe was also the first in Canada to build a practical natural gas-powered car. And then there is the Retro Electro: an all-electric 1958 Chevrolet Apache pickup truck he put together for Steam Whistle Brewery to deliver beer in a very green way.

Now Joe, who is originally from Hungary, believes he has found a practical solution for converting regular ‘lunch bucket’ gas-guzzlers into fully electric vehicles.

The big difference with his system is that his electric car is self-charging and can be plugged into any 110-volt household electrical outlet for additional charging.

Because he is interested in simple and cheap, he picked a very used $1,800 1998 Subaru Forester with a five-speed manual transmission and all-wheel drive. Says Joe: “I like every day ‘lunch bucket’ cars that anyone can afford.”

He removed the engine and gas tank to install an off-the-shelf 71 horsepower electric motor along with batteries and other electronics worth approximately $6,000.

His labour, with a cost equivalent of $4,000, makes this a $10,000 conversion. But this Subaru will never visit another gas station, need an oil change, radiator flush or repairs to its old gasoline engine.

The concept came to Joe as he was listening to his washing machine change cycles.

“It’s all controlled by solenoids,” he says enthusiastically. “I got the idea to control the charging of each battery from a separate alternator driven by belt by the electric engine using the same type of solenoid.”

No high-priced computers here. Just a simple system where a timer controls a solenoid to allow each direct current (DC) 12-volt battery to charge individually at one minute intervals; just like a washing machine changes cycles.

Under the hood, the small electric motor looks right at home with a belt driving the charge alternator as well as the driving alternator so all the usual amenities like radio, power windows and gauges work normally.

The same belt that turns the two alternators drives the power steering pump. One charges the service battery and the other charges the batteries powering the electric motor. An inverter changes the direct current (DC) from the bank of batteries to alternating current (AC) to operate the electric drive motor.

Everything is home-built, including the plate that holds the alternators and power steering pump and the housing to connect the electric motor to the five-speed manual transmission.

The electric motor in the front weighs about half what the gasoline engine did. And the batteries in the rear weigh less than the full gasoline tank they replaced.

Driving the car, Joe shifts through the five speeds to ensure the motor doesn’t have to use as much battery power. The reverse gear means his electric motor doesn’t have to run backwards – again, saving power.

He lifts the tailgate to reveal his ‘electric gas tank,’ a bank of nine batteries that all charge individually. DC batteries cannot be charged in series. Extra charging comes from a small battery charger purchased from Canadian Tire that is loosely mounted under the hood. It looks quite out of place. But it does the job.

One very special feature of the all-electric car will come into play if there is a malfunction. Joe left the original starter motor in the car that can move the car out of harm’s way if it stalls in traffic.

“I can do this for any car – even vintage cars,” Joe says considering every market for his electric power conversions. “Changing everything will take only two days. You drive in with gasoline and drive out using only electric power. No gas tank. No tail pipe. No emissions. No extra costs.”

He opens the gas door on the rear passenger side of the old Subaru and plugs in an extension cord.

“This is all you do to charge your car. Plug it in to any normal outlet,” he says.

He has designed a feature where the electric motor will not start while the gas door is open, noting, “(T)his will prevent people from driving away with the cord.”

A digital screen mounted on the dashboard of the car monitors all electric functions including motor rpm, battery charging, how much battery power is left and how far the car can be driven with the current charge.

He believes his self-charging electric car will be able to travel 50 to 70 per cent further than conventional electric-powered vehicles. That would take it from the normal range of 200 kilometres to at least 350 before the batteries would need to be charged.

“There is no all electric car today that can charge itself,” he says. “This is the only one.”

He has only driven his electric ‘lunch bucket’ car a few test miles where it performed beautifully. But he knows it will be efficient and trouble free.

“I plan to drive it to the Hope Slide to test it on a steep hill,” he says of the proposed 250-kilometre round trip through the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver and into the mountains beyond.

Will he patent his latest automotive invention? Not interested.

“I’m too old to benefit from that,” he says. “I’m hoping smarter people come along and put this together with sophisticated computer-driven electronics so the car can do the same thing – charge itself.”

He’s glad to show anybody interested why his electric car is different than those that cost tens of millions of dollars to develop and manufacture.

And oil isn't a dirty business? Pipeline bursts, air pollution, oil spills... aren't we going to be dealing with the repercussions of those for generations as well? I'm all for recognizing the hurdles of the EV, but let's not forget that we are coming from a pretty bad place with fossil fuels.

Let's also be realistic. Eventually the price of lithium will give way for the need to recycle it. We cannot reject an entire technology because we lack the motivation to do something we should be doing for the sake of our quality of life. When it becomes economically necessary and viable, we will recycle lithium. If anything, the argument you made should be enough to say we should be recycling it, thus making a stronger case for the EV.

Let's not forget about repurposing as an alternative to recycling. Lithium batteries are great for EVs because they can output a tremendous amount of energy quickly. They can also accept a tremendous amount of input charge. as they age, they lost their ability to give and receive energy quickly but are still viable means of energy storage. Their capacity degrades but not as quickly as their ability to quickly transfer energy. That makes a used battery pack from an EV the perfect candidate to be repurposed into a battery bank for home energy storage. Those cells can still happily, though somewhat slowly, accept power from a solar cell bank, store it, and give it back to the home on demand.

That would mean he would have to admit that he's not the smartest in the room, and that other people have better ideas and execution.

And would also send his supporters in a frenzy to justify the shift.

Well come on, he makes rocket stages return and safely land on the earth...

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A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission.

I remember the stories about Musk camping out on the roof of the factory. It really hit me because it reminded me of the first house I renovated. Contractors ran over time and budget (when do they not), my part of the work was more involved than anticipated (when is it not), and I was seriously behind schedule and bloody effing DYING to move out of where I was and into the renovated place. So I took a sleeping bag with me the next day and started sleeping there. Worked until I dropped, got up, did it again.

I'm not saying this is what Elon Musk is doing. But it would not surprise me if it was. What he wants more than anything on earth is for Tesla to become successful. And it has nothing at all to do with money, beyond the need for spending a few boatloads of it along the way.

A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission.